Premier League scores, Week 22: Everything goes Chelsea’s way

Did you enjoy those two weeks of drama in the Premier League, when it looked like Chelsea might be vulnerable? It turns out they’re just fine and everyone else is considerably more vulnerable.

The Blues are now eight points clear at the top of the league after the teams directly below them dropped points, and you can go back to believing that the Premier League title race is over again if you wish. The current acceptable counter-argument is “ehhhhhhhhhh ... you never know what’s going to happen.”

Saturday’s scores

Liverpool 2-3 Swansea City
Bournemouth 2-2 Watford
Crystal Palace 0-1 Everton
Middlesbrough 1-3 West Ham United
Stoke City 1-1 Manchester United
West Bromwich Albion 2-0 Sunderland
Manchester City 2-2 Tottenham Hotspur

Sunday’s scores

Southampton 3-0 Leicester City
Arsenal 2-1 Burnley
Chelsea 2-0 Hull City

Two weeks ago, Chelsea lost to Tottenham Hotspur. Last week, they left Diego Costa at home after rumors emerged that he’d been the subject of a bid from a Chinese Super League club. But with the CSL changing their foreign player rules, their big clubs don’t have room for any more big stars during this transfer window.

If Costa was ever angry over not being allowed to move, it’s a non-issue now. He’s back in Chelsea’s starting lineup and scored the winner against Hull City.

And given how the rest of the league performed this week, it feels like Chelsea is back to being runaway title favorites. Four of their five rivals for the top six places dropped points, while another — Arsenal — needed a last-minute penalty to beat Burnley.

While Liverpool’s loss to Swansea was stunning and puts an even bigger dent in their struggling title hopes, it didn’t seem like a match that was indicative of a long-term problem. Check out the Expected Goals map from Michael Caley at @Caley_Graphics.

Swansea deserved to win and generated some big chances, but only had six total shots. Their finishing was excellent. Those chances were also big gifts, on a couple of occasions by Dejan Lovren. Jürgen Klopp will be thrilled to be able to rotate his defense going forward, with Joel Matip recently receiving clearance to return to action by FIFA after a spat with Cameroon.

Wayne Rooney is now Manchester United’s all-time leading goal scorer with 250, passing Bobby Charlton, thanks to this strike.

In his post-game interview, Rooney wasn’t terribly celebratory, due to United dropping points. But Rooney’s career deserves to be celebrated — he’s undoubtedly one of the greatest English players of all time, and one of the best of any nationality to play for Manchester United. His recent decline shouldn’t take anything away from that. There was a period of time where he was one of the world’s top attacking players, and 250 goals for United is an amazing accomplishment.

19-year-old Brazilian Gabriel Jesus made his debut for Manchester City on Saturday and looked like he’ll be able to make an instant impact. With his first three touches, he had a cross that was nearly turned into the back of the net, a header that was saved by Hugo Lloris, and a goal disallowed for offside.

It might take him some time to adjust to the Premier League, but it’s telling that Pep Guardiola was willing to hand Gabriel Jesus his debut so quickly. He was one of the best players in the Brasileirao during Palmeiras’ title-winning season in 2016, and he’s already formed some excellent chemistry with Neymar in the Brazilian national team. He’s one of the world’s top teenage talents, and might prove to be a bargain at £27 million.

Though, while you might have been impressed, Gabriel Jesus’ mother probably wasn’t. “With no shadow of a doubt she will complain about me being offside,” he said about his biggest supporter and harshest critic after the game.

This guy just can’t help himself.

Is this tackle worthy of a straight red card? Maybe not. But when you’re Granit Xhaka, a player who has a reputation for recklessness, you have to know better. This is his ninth red card for club and country in the last four seasons, and his second in the Premier League for Arsenal.

Watford’s recent poor form has called Walter Mazzarri’s job security into question, with the Hornets failing to win in their last six Premier League games. They’ll be feeling a bit better after scoring two goals in an away draw on Saturday, but both came on set pieces. Miguel Britos flicked on to Christian Kabasele for the first, and Troy Deeney turned in the second from a corner by Tom Cleverley.

Mazzarri’s back three system is still struggling a bit to create chances from open play and prevent big chances from opponents, but if they can find any way to get results, he’ll keep getting chances. His team’s set piece prowess should keep him employed for at least another week.

The loss of Dimitri Payet to a strike/benching has been addition by subtraction for West Ham, but not because other players are better. Mostly, it’s because they play to Andy Carroll’s strengths with Payet out of the team and Carroll in at center forward. Check out how many excellent chances West Ham created against Middlesbrough.

West Ham is a team loaded with physical, direct players. They have to play a bit differently with Payet in the team, and it makes them worse, even if he’s a top class player. Saturday’s game was more evidence that they should take what they can get for him in the transfer market.

Fresh off scoring his first career Premier League goal against Manchester City, 18-year-old midfielder Tom Davies got the start for Everton against Crystal Palace. He set up the winning goal, recovering a clearance before picking his head up and playing a perfect pass into the box for Seamus Coleman.

It was part of an all-around solid performance for Davies, who doesn’t appear to have any big holes in his game as a central midfielder. Expect to see a lot more of him going forward.

West Brom beat Sunderland in a game that wasn’t great, except for this nasty knuckling volley by Chris Brunt. It was good enough to make the game on its own.

Also, it continues to be weird that someone as technically solid as Chris Brunt spent his whole career at West Brom.

Leicester turned in one of their worst performances of the season on Sunday in a 3-0 loss to Southampton, and they now have the worst record for a defending Premier League champion through 22 games. Their record is joint-worst ever for a top flight defending champ in the pre-Premier League era, too, tied with Ipswich Town in 1962-63.

Losing Riyad Mahrez, Islam Slimani, and Daniel Amartey for Africa Cup of Nations hurt, but Leicester was struggling before their departures. It’s hard to think of last year’s title winners as relegation battlers, but they’ve given us no reason to believe they’re too good to go down this season.